Sinica Podcast27 Okt 2022

Grifter, chaos agent, or CCP spy? The New Yorker's Evan Osnos on Guo Wengui

This week on Sinica, Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, joins hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about his new piece on one of the most puzzling figures to come out of China: Guo Wengui, a.k.a. Miles Kwok, who took what he learned about dealing with power and money in China and applied those lessons to the U.S., insinuating himself with leading figures of the American right. Who is this mysterious man, and what is he really after? In an unscripted episode that will bring some listeners back to the grotty apartment in Beijing where Sinica recorded in its very early days, Evan, Kaiser, and Jeremy parse the mysteries of the strange phenomenon of Guo Wengui.

03:37 – Who is Guo Wengui?

10:07 – Orville Schell’s experience with Guo Wengui

14:48 – Steve Bannon’s comparison between Guo and Trump

17:40 – The process of fact-checking this piece

23:03 – Guo’s potential ties to the pro-Xi Jinping clique

26:02 – VOA’s interview with Guo

30:06 – Guo’s campaign against Teng Biao and other Chinese dissidents

33:57 – Guo’s role as an interlocutor on behalf of the MSS

39:00 – Steve Wynn’s efforts to extradite Guo

42:10 – Guo’s impact on the Chinese diaspora community

45:11 – Guo’s influence on US-China relations

A transcript of this interview is available at TheChinaProject.com.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: "President Trump's First Term," by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker article written in 2016 predicting what would happen to the U.S. if Donald Trump won in 2016. (Spoiler: he did. And Evan was right).

Evan: An audio tribute to legendary New Yorker editor John Bennet: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/johnbennet.php

Kaiser: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, a forgivably melodramatic historical fiction novel with an emphasis on architecture

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